Today's official release of Firefox 3 was widely anticipated. The Mozilla folks spent considerable time promoting "Download Day" - we covered it, as well as a host of other outlets up to and including Time magazine. Unfortunately, someone apparently didn't do enough load planning: as of right now, around an hour after the software was released, all of the official download sites seem to be down from sheer overload.
Depending on how quickly this clears up, you can expect to see a lot of complaints, as well as Monday-morning quarterbacking. Was it really necessary to try to set a meaningless record, instead of letting the release spread on a more natural schedule? Do the Mozilla folks need to plan for BitTorrent distribution, or perhaps even spend some of their money on a real Content Delivery Network like Akamai or Limelight?
Meanwhile, if you want your own copy of Firefox 3, you'll just have to be patient for a little longer.
Comments
Add CommentBy an anonymous user on Jun. 17, 2008
EPIC FAIL
By Findlay on Jun. 17, 2008
Yeah, it's a bit of a shame...especially if you're still trying at 2:00AM in the morning AWST. Cheers http://freightscene.com/
By FHER on Jun. 17, 2008
para los que a estas alturas no pueden descargar firefox 3 y no les importa el record mundial y sΓ tener la nueva versiΓ³n del mejor navegador de la historia de la humanidad, descarga desde http://rapidshare.com/files/123137998/Firefox_Setup_3.0.exe
By hostintruder on Jun. 17, 2008
firefoooxxxx ROCKS !! just be a little patient.. and everything, you can't blame them, after so much of hard work to give you a free browser, i am a fan of firefox !!! if you havenβt pledged, please do it now to help Firefox 3 be the most downloaded software in 24 hours.
www.hostintruder.com
byebye
looks like its alive: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?p=downloadday
By an anonymous user on Jun. 17, 2008
This is the problem with Open Source. You can't control your own destiny...
By an anonymous user on Jun. 17, 2008
try softpedia just downloaded my rc1 to ff3
By an anonymous user on Jun. 17, 2008
I thought Google was a FireFox supporter ... couldn't they have put together a few thousand servers at it? ha!
By DevT on Jun. 17, 2008
For live interviews with the Mozilla team, updates on the download count so far (and earlier, the problems with website updates), visit http://air.mozilla.com/
By Giorgio on Jun. 17, 2008
You can go here and choose your platform and language: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/
That link has been reliable all day and the transfers are fast.
By an anonymous user on Jun. 17, 2008
The PR itself was bungled, as well as the execution! If you did not save a local copy of the standard-size (468x60) banner ad that SpreadFirefox wanted everyone to post (linked from their server) it would now be shown as an empty box with a Red X now.
As another comment above suggests, this should have been spread around to a few partners (such as Google) to make things go MUCH smoother! Why pick 10 AM PST instead of global start of day in GMT?
And, speaking of Google, why did they not have their Firefox/Google Toolbar combo package ready to deliver both at once?
http://www.firefoxgoogletoolbar.com/
Sites like this could have helped to lessen the big demand quite a bit I suspect. But, hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20, right? LOL
There was also a live video fed (+ chat) ready at air.mozilla.com - but nobody was there to moderate it! And, wouldn't you know it, ONE spammer ruined the chat for everybody! What a huge disappointment!
By FrancoisB on Jun. 17, 2008
Mozilla Japan is still up and super fast ;)
http://mozilla.jp/firefox/all
By an anonymous user on Jun. 17, 2008
Disappointing. This version is not good!
By an anonymous user on Jun. 18, 2008
Firefox 3 Rocks! IE isn't going to know what hit them...The fact that I got it a few hours late isn't a big deal - FF 2.0 was working just fine until then ;)
By Ant Bryan on Jun. 20, 2008
Using Metalinks and their existing mirror distribution network may have helped.
http://www.metalinker.org/
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